The war against Columbus Day?

Commentary by Greg Krasovsky on "The war against Columbus Day" in The Washington Post.

  

You know the writing is on the wall when an establishment newspaper, such as the Washington Post, starts publicly questioning Columbus Day.

I hate to say it, but over the years I've come to realize that Christopher Columbus was no hero.

Yes, he may have a been a 15th century European pioneer explorer who discovered (for himself and his crown) the Caribbean, but any praise that the discovery should have merited was quickly obliterated by the brutal, sadistic and murderous exploitation of Native Americans by Columbus and his allies, including his brother.

Here's an appropriate quote from another WP article today "More cities celebrating ‘Indigenous Peoples Day’ amid effort to abolish Columbus Day"

"“This is something that I’ve struggled with for a long time,” Sarah Adams-Cornell told the station last month. “The fact that our country, our state and our city celebrate this holiday around this man who murdered and enslaved and raped indigenous people and decimated an entire population.”"

  

If we claim to be moral, tolerant and democratic, then we need to make this holiday into a tribute to all the indigenous Americans who wrongly and needlessly perished from European colonization of the Americas.

We also need to start setting this right with Native Americans in the United States, especially in light of all the treaties that were violated with Native American tribes and nations.

So when will the Washington Post demand that the Washington Redskins drop the team's racist name?

   

Hmmm...I guess that it's easier to criticize an abstract holiday that costs businesses and the government money than to go after one of America's most visible sport teams?

   

How about detouring or canceling that Dakota Access Pipeline which would desecrate Native American burial grounds and potentially pollute their lands?

    Please read "Tribe to Continue Fight After Court Refuses to Halt Dakota Access Pipeline" to get a sense at how fair the current American Court system is toward Indigenous Americans.

Or is Big Oil an exception as well when it comes to rehabilitating and compensating victims of genocide and other war crimes that were committed against Indigenous Americans?

How can we ask G-d to bless America and expect that his blessing (a divinely exact apportionment of G-d's supreme justice for observing AND violating His laws, including those that prohibit stealing from your fellow man as well as killing, raping, unjustly enslaving and exploiting him) will bring America prosperity and peace when we as a country not only continue to refuse to repent for what we've down to Indigenous Americans, make amends (reasonable reparations) but also continue to violate blatantly their rights and dignity? 

  

So what happens eventually to those people, societies, nations and empires who continue to tempt G-d's judgment and wrath by habitually violating his laws? 

I think that some call it Karma. What goes around comes around.

Does G-d and the Universe tolerate moral recidivism on such a mass scale as the genocide of Indigenous Americans more than American states that have "Three Strikes & You're Out" laws on their books against felon repeat offenders?

  

So let's stop tempting fate, repent about what our ancestors, country and government did to Native Americans and make amends.  

Otherwise, every time that we sing "God Bless America..." we'll be writing another letter in the Divine guilty verdict and sentence against us with all ensuing consequences for us and our progeny. 

Since the Lord works in mysterious ways, I don't think that we'll be able to avoid or commute that sentence no matter how much money we throw at avoiding divine wrath through defense or technology. 

Let's just remember how much money the Roman Empire spent on defense, civil works and entertainment after brutally colonizing, enslaving and killing millions within and around its Empire, including the Jews. 

But even adopting Christianity at the end couldn't help save Rome, which never recognized and repented for what it did to all those "savages" and peoples "lesser" than Roman nobility and citizens.

  

Those who do not properly learn history are bound to repeat it.

   

With all that in mind, do we continue to celebrate Columbus Day and discriminate against (oppress!) Indigenous Americans or do we begin to recognize and celebrate true heroes like Red Cloud who fought to protect his people and land?  See "Red Cloud’s War" 

  

So what's our choice, America?

  

Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day?

Above photo is from The Huffington Post's "Native American Activists Ramp Up Push To Rebrand Columbus Day" 

*******

Selected Excerpts:

  

"“It is important to acknowledge the original people of this land, and that is something that Columbus Day has completely contradicted,” Laura Medina, an Arizona State University student and activist

...

"Phoenix and Denver join at least 26 other cities across the country that will celebrate Native Americans on Monday, while federal and state governments observe Columbus Day.

...

The idea of celebrating Indigenous People’s Day was first proposed nearly 40 years ago, when a delegation of Native nations to a U.N. conference in Geneva passed a resolution. 

Thirteen years later, in 1990, the First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in Ecuador passed a resolution changing Columbus Day into a celebration of Native Americans."

  

Also please read this WP blog "Answer Sheet" - "Columbus Day is still a U.S. federal holiday. But why?"

     "As for Columbus himself, he mapped the coasts of Central America and South America but never set foot on North America, and died thinking he had discovered Asia. 

     He ruled the Caribbean islands as viceroy and governor so brutally that, according to US-History.com: “Even his most ardent admirers acknowledge that Columbus was self-centered, ruthless, avaricious and a racist.”

...

    In 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress, bowing to lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, an influential Catholic group that wanted a Catholic hero to be honored, proclaimed Oct. 12 to be Columbus Day, a national holiday. In 1971, the holiday date was changed to the second Monday in October."

Leaked memo proves Soros ruled Ukraine in 2014!

Greg Krasovsky: Back in 2014 the vast majority of Ukrainians desperately wanted a democratic country free of corruption and foreign influence.

Thanks to George Soros,  his allies in Washington and their local oligarch friends in Kyiv, what we have now is a Ukraine despotically ruled by corrupt local oligarchs under the control of foreign powers whose primary concerns are not for Ukrainians and their well being, but for geopolitical gains against Russia using Ukraine as an expendable pawn.

Am I wrong?

Leaked memo proves Soros ruled Ukraine in 2014!

"The leaked Soros memos continue to provide fascinating information on the extent to which the Soros world works hand in hand with Washington to push a neocon, interventionist foreign policy.

In the Ukraine crisis, US Ambassador to Kiev took his marching orders directly from Soros, at one point asking Soros “what USG should be doing and what the USG is currently doing.”

Soros replied: “Obama has been too soft on Putin.”

The hand behind the screen, manipulating policy."

More on these amazing revelations at the link:

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2016/august/20/leaked-memo-proves-soros-ruled-ukraine-in-2014-minutes-from-breakfast-with-us-ambassador-pyatt/

When they came for...

Greg Krasovsky: Today on August 10, 2014 my maternal grandmother died as a victim of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Lugansk Region of Eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Coal Basin (AKA "Donbass").

For a brief biography of her life please see a Facebook post dedicated to her 100 birthday "Today, my late maternal grandmother, Antonina Krasovskaya, (Antonina Krasowska) would have turned 100."

On the 2nd anniversary of her death I remembered "First they came ..." - a famous statement and provocative poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group.
  
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. quotes the following text as one of the many poetic versions of the speech:

"First they came for the Socialists*, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist*.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

*But the quotation that's on display is a variation which substitutes "Socialists" for "Communists". 
      
So I thought about my position on war crimes since I turned 21 in 1989 and, as police officer, swore to protect the citizens of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including my late grandmother and I put together my own personal & amateur rendition of Pastor Niemöller 's masterpiece:
   
When in 1989 and 1990 U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Panama, I did not speak out- 
Because I was not Panamanian.[1]

When in 1999 U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Serbia, I did not speak out- 
Because I was not Serbian.[2]

When between 2001 and 2014 U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, I did not speak out- 
Because I was not Afghani.[3]

When between 2003 and 2014 U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Iraq, I did not speak out- 
Because I was not Iraqi.[4]

When between 2001 and 2014 U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Pakistan (see The Drone Wars), I did not speak out- 
Because I was not Pakistani.[5]

When in 2011 U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya, I did not speak out- 
Because I was not Libyan.[6]
  
When between 2011 and 2014 U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria, I did not speak out- 
Because I was not Syrian.[7]

When in the spring and summer of 2014 I came to believe that U.S. Government troops, agents and allies committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Eastern Ukraine, I debated on whether to speak out.
  
But if we don't speak out then it'll happen again and again until sooner or later it could happen on U.S. soil to U.S. citizens at the hands of their own government.

Unless we don't care if the U.S., its agents and allies commit war crimes and crimes against humanity [8] abroad against who our government unilaterally considers "bad guys" in our foreign policy or war against terror[9].

 

So a year after maternal grandmother Antonina was killed, I decided to write a letter to President Barack Obama [10].
  
When President Obama did not respond to a letter from a Washington, DC based attorney sent by U.S. Postal Service Certified Mail, I sent follow up letters to Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry. 

But I never received a single reply. 

Major Western news outlets were told not to cover the story because of national security concerns.
   
So who's left and willing to speak for the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity in East Ukraine?
   
****

[1] See http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/15/the-invasion-of-panama/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama

[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia 

[3] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:War_crimes_in_Afghanistan

[4] See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/iraq-war-crimes/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War

[5] See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/22/amnesty-us-officials-war-crimes-drones
  
[6] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_during_the_Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)

[7] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_during_the_Syrian_Civil_War
    
[8] United States war crimes are violations of the laws and customs of war committed by the United States Armed Forces since the signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. These have included the summary execution of captured enemy combatants, the mistreatment of prisoners during interrogation, and the use of violence against civilian non-combatants.

War crimes can be prosecuted in the United States through the War Crimes Act of 1996. However, the United States Federal Government does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its nationals, as the United States is not a party to the Court.[1]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_crimes
   
[9] The FBI uses the following definition for Terrorism: "The unlawful use of force or violence committed by a group or individual, who has some connection to a foreign power or whose activities transcend national boundaries, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

Sir Peter Ustinov: "Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is the terrorism of the rich." 

*********
  

August 18, 2015

Barack Hussein Obama II

President of The United States of America

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, District of Columbia

Re:      Deaths of two U.S. Citizens in Ukraine from war crimes and crimes

            against humanity during the summer of 2014.

Mr. President,

            This is a formal inquiry regarding potential involvement of U.S. politicians, government officials, employees, military officers and enlisted personnel, contractors and agents in the current Ukrainian civil conflict and the crimes of war and against humanity committed therein, including potential involvement in and/or knowledge of the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Lugansk Region, Ukraine in June and August of 2014.

            My mother, Ekaterina Krasovskaya (DOB 8/11/1941, also known as Katherine Krasowsky and Katherine Krasowska), a naturalized U.S. Citizen, died in Lugansk, Ukraine on June 3, 2014. She died from double pneumonia that could not be treated properly due to Ukraine Armed Forces’ airstrikes and other military activities in the Lugansk region.

            My maternal grandmother, Antonina Krasovskaya (DOB 4/16/1916, also known as Antonina Krasowska), a naturalized U.S. Citizen, died in the village of Khryaschevatoe, a suburb of Lugansk, Ukraine, on August 10, 2014. She died from trauma, concussion and shell shock sustained from a Ukrainian Armed Forces shell that exploded outside the house where she was staying on or about August 5, 2014.

            Based on my information and belief, the U.S. Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Health & Human Services and the CIA have been aware since last year of the fact and circumstances surrounding the deaths of my mother and grandmother in Eastern Ukraine.

            I am a U.S. Citizen of Ukrainian, Russian, and African heritage. I was born in Moscow, Russia (then the Soviet Union) in 1968 and am a Russian citizen by birth. I spent the first 4 years of my life in the Lugansk Region of Ukraine. I have lived for about 18 years in Moscow, Russia, a year in Vienna, Austria and about 24 years in the United States (Philadelphia, New York and suburban Washington, DC).  I am married to a Russian citizen of Russian-Ukrainian descent and have three children, all dual citizens of Russia and the United States. As such, I have strong ties to Russia, Ukraine and The United States.

           

            Based on my information and belief, the United States has provided extensive diplomatic, military and intelligence support to the Government of Ukraine (after the February 22, 2014 ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich) in planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of military, security and law enforcement actions against the pro-autonomy (“separatist”) political leadership, insurgents and their supporters in Eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Coal Basin (“Donbass”), primarily in Donetsk and Lugansk administrative regions of Ukraine and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics based therein.

            Such monitoring, coordination and support was conducted & provided primarily by the United States’ diplomatic corps, military personnel, intelligence community personnel and their contractors & agents to the Ukrainian Government, Ukrainian Armed Forces (‘VSU”), the Ukrainian National Guard (“NGU”), various Volunteer Territorial Battalions (“VTBU”), paramilitary groups (e.g. “Right Sector” and “UNA-UNSO”) and Pro-U.S./EU/NATO political parties & movements,

            U.S. Government support, coordination and monitoring has also extended to Ukraine’s intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies, including The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (“SZRU”), The Security Service of Ukraine (“SBU”) and The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (“MZS”).

            VSU, NGU and VTBU, such as the infamous Aydar and Azov battalions, coordinated their activities not only with the Ukrainian Government and its SBU, but also with U.S. Government personnel in Ukraine, including Department of State, Department of Defense (NSA, DIA, USSOCOM and etc.) and Intelligence Community (first and foremost CIA) personnel, contractors and agents.

            Based on my information and belief, I am concerned that U.S. Citizens, government entities, NGOs, and private companies and/or their personnel, either directly or through their agents, may have (a) been aware of, (b) been part of a common plan or conspiracy to accomplish, or (c) participated in the execution of certain actions in Ukraine that constitute

-          war crimes,

-          crimes against humanity and other inhumane acts,

-          serious and systemic human rights violations,

-          crimes and violations of applicable state law (including the United States and Ukraine), intentional treaties, agreements and/or assurances,

hereinafter referred to collectively as “Unlawful Acts in Ukraine.” Lists of selected documented violations and applicable international law are attached.

            Such Unlawful Acts in Ukraine have been documented by international human rights groups, such as Amnesty International (London, UK), Human Rights Watch (London, UK), The Foundation for the Study of Democracy (Moscow, Russia), Information Group on Crimes Against The Person (Moscow, Russia) as well as the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “The White Book of Human Rights Violations and Principles of Rule of Law in Ukraine.”

            These publications are available online and, based on my information and belief, known to the U.S. State and Defense Departments as well as elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community, including the CIA. Their English language translations, if not available already, can be prepared for you by The National Virtual Translation Center or qualified linguists from other U.S. Government agencies.

            I believe that Unlawful Acts in Ukraine committed by the Ukrainian Government, Ukrainian Armed Forces (VSU, NGU and VTBU), Ukrainian Security Services (SBU, SZRU and MZS) and paramilitary groups either caused or contributed to the deaths of my mother and maternal grandmother last summer.

            I am also concerned that U.S. Government personnel, contractors and/or agents may have been involved in some inappropriate way or aware of such Unlawful Acts in Ukraine and did not do what was required to prevent, stop or report such Unlawful Acts in Ukraine to relevant government authorities for appropriate law enforcement, prosecutorial or judicial action.

           

            As a U.S. citizen, an attorney and a former police officer, I cannot sit and do nothing about the possibility that U.S. citizens and U.S. Government personnel may be involved in and/or promoting immoral, undemocratic and unlawful conduct in Ukraine that violates the principles upon which The United States was established as a country by our founding fathers, including the U.S. Constitution.

            Having received my undergraduate education at Columbia College, Columbia University in New York (BA in Political Science with an emphasis on regime change in developing countries), I believe that the United States cannot remain the cradle or the champion of true democracy, freedom and equality world-wide – no matter how solid or noble our geopolitical objectives – if our country is involved in systemic human rights violations, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Ukraine, the geographic center of Europe.

            Accordingly, I petition you, as the President of The United States of America, to order all relevant U.S. Government Departments, agencies and offices, including the U.S. Department of Justice & its FBI and all elements (members) of the U.S. Intelligence Community, to

• Conduct an investigation regarding whether any U.S. Government entity, personnel, contractors and/or agents knew about, monitored, reported, approved, advised, facilitated (either actively or tacitly through failure to act), aided & abetted, conspired to commit, supported, requested, participated in a conspiracy to commit or committed themselves Unlawful Acts in Ukraine,

• Initiate and/or support criminal prosecution, either in the U.S. or abroad, of any and all individuals, either U.S. nationals or foreign citizens, for Unlawful Acts in Ukraine to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law of the United States of America, international law and laws of all relevant countries, such as Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

• Take all appropriate measures to ensure that, in the future, U.S. individuals and entities, both public and private, and their management, employees, contractors, agents and allies do not become involved in any of the aforementioned ways in Unlawful Acts on the territory of Ukraine, regardless of whether such Unlawful Acts are planned or committed by Ukrainian or foreigner actors.

            Please provide a response to my inquiry as soon as possible by email. Additional information and supporting documentation regarding my concerns and allegations can and will be provided upon request in separate correspondence.

Respectfully Yours,

                                               /S/

Gregory Krasovsky, Esq.

Tel: +1-703-xxx-xxxx, Email: krasovsky2015@gmail...

   

*************************************

1. List of potential war crimes.

·         Aerial Bombing and shelling of civilian residential areas.

·         Use of unlawful and inappropriate weapons in civilian residential areas

·         Refusal and/or failure to evacuate civilians prior to or during military operations.

·         Unlawful detention of civilians and their use as human shields.

·         Disruption of medical services & Destruction of medical facilities

·         Disruption of communications & Destruction of communications infrastructure

·         Disruption of transportation & destruction of transportation facilities and infrastructure

·         Disruption of Utilities (Water, Electricity, Natural Gas, Sewage and Heating)

·         Disruption of education services and destruction of educational facilities  

·         Disruption and stoppage of food deliveries

·         Disruption and stoppage of humanitarian aid deliveries

·         Disruption and Destruction of industry and commerce

·         Genocide

·         Ethnic, Linguistic and Religious Cleansing, Silent Cleansing, community violence

·         Harassment, intimidation, abuse, assault, torture, rape, manslaughter and murder of civilians.

·         Murder, Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of pro-autonomy (separatist) insurgents and supporters.

·         Unlawful means of war meant to demoralize and intimidate civilian populations (Shock and Awe, Total War, Collective Punishment and etc.)

2. List of Potential crimes against humanity and human rights abuses

·         Mass Surveillance

·         Selective prosecution

·         Unlawful or arbitrary detentions and arrests

·         Torture (including by “Enhanced interrogation techniques”)

·         Manslaughter and murder of civilians separatists and supporters (by Death Squads and use of kill lists)

·         Inhumane prison conditions

·         Hiding of prisoners (including at black sites)

·         Denial of access to legal counsel.

·         Harassment, intimidation and persecution of attorneys representing political opposition and individuals.

·         Assault, detention, torture and murder of Humanitarian workers.

·         Ethnic Cleansing.

·         Police Brutality.

·         Selective persecutions on political, ethnic or religious grounds.

·         Restriction on freedom of movement and identity cleansing.

·         Support of hate groups (Right Sector, UNA-UNSO and etc.).

·         Encouragement and support of russophobia, xenophobia and racism

·         Press censorship and persecution of opposition journalists.

·         Propaganda, disinformation and hate media

3. Interference in and deprivation of Political Rights

  

• Unconstitutional or legally questionable regime change with covert foreign support and participation

• Containment, harassment, suppression and elimination of political opposition, parties & movements.

• Interference in Political Affairs by foreign-funded and backed Agents of Influence and Agents Provocateur

·         Persecution, selective detention, trial and imprisonment of opposition politicians

• Political Assassinations

SELECTED INTERNATIONAL LAW ON WAR AND HUMAN RIGHTS

1. Treaties, Conventions and Statutes on War Crimes.

1. 1907 Hague Convention IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War

2. Annex to the Convention: Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War

3. 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare

4. 1945 The Nuremberg Principles

5. 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

6. 1949 Geneva Convention I for the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field

7. 1949 Geneva Convention II for the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea

8. 1949 Geneva Convention III Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War

9. 1949 Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War

10. 1977 Geneva Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts

11. 1977 Geneva Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts

12. 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction

13. 1980 UN Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects

14. 1980 Protocol I on Non-Detectable Fragments

15. 1980 Protocol II on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices

16. 1996 Amended Protocol II on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices

17. 1980 UN Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects

18. 1980 Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons

19. 1995 Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons

20. 2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict

21. 2003 Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War

22. 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction

23. 1997 Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction

24. 1993 Statute of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991

25. 1994 Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in the Territory of Neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994

26. 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

27. 2005 Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem (Protocol III)

28. 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions

2. Declarations, Conventions, Covenants and Charters on Human Rights.

1. 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2. 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms)

3. 1952 Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 

4. 1953 European Convention on Social and Medical Assistance 

5. 1953 Protocol to the European Convention on Social and Medical Assistance 

6. 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict

7. Regulations for the Execution of Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict

8. 1954 First Hague Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict

9. 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child

10. 1961 European Social Charter

11. 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

12. 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

13. 1977 European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism

14. 1987 UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

15. 1987 European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

16. 1989 UN International Convention on the Rights of the Child

17. 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages 

18. 1999 Second Hague Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict

19. 2006 UN International Convention For The Protection Of All Persons From Enforced Disappearance

 *************

75th anniversary of the July 1, 1941 Lviv Pogrom of Jews by Ukrainian Nationalists and Nazi collaborators.

Greg Krasovsky: Sadly, today is the 75th anniversary of the July 1, 1941 Lviv Pogrom of Jews by Ukrainian Nationalists and Nazi collaborators.

May the victims rest in peace and may the perpetrators receive their just punishment in the world and the next.

What's sad and scary is that the current Ukrainian government hails Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and war criminals as heroes who were fighting for Ukrainian independence. 

Apparently, this adopts the Nazi slogan of fighting against the Jewish-Bolshevik menace - including by torturing, raping and killing innocent Jewish and Polish women and children.

This is a moral dead end which will do nothing but lead to the moral decay of modern Ukrainian society and especially its youth. 

Germany has learned the right lessons by acknowledging and condemning the genocide and war crimes that the Nazis committed during World War II against the Jews and other nations. 

  

Unfortunately, modern anti-Russian Ukrainian Nationalists have not repented for the sins of their ancestors and believe that Nazi collaboration and related war crimes were justified by their fight against Stalin's Soviet Union. 

FYI, comrade Joseph Stalin was not a Jew or a Russian - he was a Georgian Bolshevik who had graduated from a Jesuit seminary and, being an anti-Semite himself, successfully purged most Soviet Jewish communists (by imprisonment, exile and execution) until his reign ended in 1952. 

As long as Ukrainian Nationalists and Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera are touted as heroes and their direct participation in the Holocaust is denied, Ukraine will never become the modern European Democracy that its current political leadership claims to hold as its goal to win popular support.

****

The Lviv pogroms

By Wikipedia

   

Selected Excerpts:

The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists from 30 June to 2 July 1941, and from 25 to 29 July 1941, during the Wehrmacht's attack on Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in World War II. 

The German historian Peter Longerich and the Holocaust Encyclopedia estimate that the first pogrom cost at least 4,000 lives.[1] It was followed by the additional 2,500 to 3,000 arrests and executions in subsequent Einsatzgruppe killings,[2] and culminated in the so-called "Petlura Days" massacre of more than 2,000 Jews, all killed in a one-month span.[1][3] 

Prior to the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and the ensuing Holocaust in Europe, the city of Lviv had the third-largest Jewish population in Poland during the interwar period, which swelled further to over 200,000 Jews as the refugees fled east from the Nazis.[4]

   

Prior to the 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and the ensuing Holocaust in Europe, the city of Lviv had the third-largest Jewish population in Poland during the interwar period, which swelled further to over 200,000 Jews as the refugees fled east from the Nazis.[4]

Holocaust scholar and survivor, Filip Friedman from Lviv, uncovered an official Report of the Reich Security Main Office which documented the massacre as follows: "During the first hours after the departure of the Bolsheviks [i.e. the Soviet Army], the Ukrainian population took praisworthy action against the Jews...

About 7,000 Jews were seized and shot by the [Ukrainian] police in retribution for inhuman acts of cruelty [at Brygidki and the other prisons]..." (dated 16 July 1941).[14]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv_pogroms

    

The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Carnival Crowd

John-Paul Himka

Selected excerpts:

  

Lviv was a multinational city on the eve of World War II. In 1939 Poles formed a slight majority (157,490 of a total population of 312,231, i.e., just over 50 percent), followed by Jews (99,595 or 32 percent) and Ukrainians (49,747 or 16 percent).2 The national composition of the city changed radically during and as a result of the war: the Jews were murdered, the Poles deported, and numerous Russians immigrated.

Before war broke out, Lviv had been in Poland, but from September 1939 until the end of June 1941 it came under Soviet rule and was joined to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It changed hands again on 30 June 1941, when the Germans took the city.

Tuesday 1 July witnessed a full-blown pogrom. For this article I am using Raul Hilberg’s straightforward definition: “What are pogroms? They are short, violent outbursts by a community against its Jewish population.”10 On this day the violence took on a more ritualized form: Jews, men and women, were made to clean the streets; 

Jewish women were singled out for humiliation; and Jews were made to perform various rituals that identified them with communism. The Lviv pogrom of 1941 drew precedents from an earlier pogrom in the city perpetrated in November 1918 by Polish soldiers and civilians; it also adopted tropes and rituals from anti-Jewish actions that occurred elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Just as in Lviv in 1918, in Vienna in March 1938, and in various localities in Poland in September 1939, in Lviv in 1941 Jews were forced to clean the streets. The point was to make Jews, who were prominent in the free professions and in business, engage in demeaning physical work. As a Jewish survivor remarked: “What a terribly debasing feeling it was when doctors and professors cleaned the streets with shovels in their hands [...].”11 

According to a teenage girl, Germans and Ukrainians made a neighbour get her toothbrush to clean the street. They also made a Jewish man clean horse manure from the street by putting it in his hat.12 Judging by photographs, gentiles in Lviv found the Jewish cleaners amusing (see Figure 1). To some extent, the pogrom was a carnival.

One of the characteristic features of the pogrom was the maltreatment and humiliation of Jewish women. The scenes at Zamarstyniv street were photographed by a German camera crew;13 there is also a film of the abuse.14 There were some precedents for this in pogroms in Nazi-occupied Poland. 

Women were forcibly undressed in Kraków in December 1939,15 and many members of OUN, and particularly those who were to form the backbone of the Bandera movement, were in Kraków at that time, waiting out the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine; there is no reason to suspect that they took part in these incidents, but they may well have witnessed them. In the Easter season pogrom in Warsaw in 1940 teenagers preyed on women, especially to rob them.16 

A clearer precedent for what happened in Lviv in 1941 is what happened in Lviv in 1918; Joseph Tenenbaum, who was an eyewitness to the 1918 pogrom, wrote: “Women had to disrobe and stand naked to the delight of the crude mob.”17 In Lviv in 1941 women were shoved, kicked, beaten in the face and elsewhere with sticks and tools, pulled by the hair, and tossed from one pogromist to another. 

Many of the women were stripped naked and exposed to the crowd. Some were chased through the street.18 Rose Moskowitz had a school friend who had become an active communist. A gang caught her, cut off her hair, and ran her down the street, naked, screaming. The girl went home and killed herself.19 A Polish rescuer saw “a boy like Hercules” beating a twelve-year old Jewish girl with a chain.20 Not surprisingly, rapes were also reported.

Pregnant women were hit or kicked in the stomach.22 The pogromists stripped a twenty-year-old Jewish woman, lodged a baton in her vagina, and marched her past the post office to the prison action at Lontskoho.23 The women were robbed as well.24 Róża Wagner said she even saw prostitutes with their pimps requisitioning shoes and other items of apparel from the Jewish women.25 The victims were chosen at random, as long as they were Jewish.26

Why did OUN use its militia in Lviv to organize a pogrom and round up Jews for the Germans to kill? Partially, this flowed from the anti-Semitism of the Ukrainian nationalist movement and its leaders. Yet, anti-Semitism does not necessarily translate directly into such violence. 

In fact, OUN seemed to perceive the Poles as much more important enemies than the Jews. In September 1939, when OUN acted openly and took advantage of the civil war conditions created by the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine, OUN units killed thousands of Poles.  In summer 1941, as the Germans invaded, OUN militias and related organizations were involved in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, but of relatively few Poles.128 

When the OUN-led Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) definitively broke with the Germans in the late winter/early fall of 1943, it focused its attention on Poles, killing tens of thousands of them. In its official pronouncements, OUN always put Russians at the top of its enemy list. 

Hence the focus on violence against Jews in the first days of the German occupation seems to be somewhat anomalous. The anomaly is most plausibly explained as an attempt by OUN to demonstrate to the Germans that it shared their anti-Jewish perspectives and that it was worthy to be entrusted with the formation of a Ukrainian state.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists under the leadership of Stepan Bandera provided the engine of the pogrom. It set up a short-lived government in Lviv on 30 June 1941 headed by a vehement anti-Semite. It simultaneously plastered the city with leaflets that encouraged ethnic cleansing. It also formed a militia that assumed a leadership role in the pogrom. 

Militiamen went from apartment to apartment in Jewish neighbourhoods to arrest Jewish men and women for pogrom activities at two of the prisons; they arrested Jews on the street for a third prison that was more distant from where the Jewish population was concentrated. They conveyed the Jews to the prisons and were also present there at the maltreatment and execution of Jews.

The day after the pogrom they began to work directly for the Einsatzgruppen, again arresting Jews for execution by the Germans. OUN co-operated with the Germans in these anti-Jewish actions primarily because it hoped such collaboration would facilitate German recognition of its state. OUN’s anti-Semitism made assistance in anti-Jewish violence palatable, but it is unlikely that it was an independent factor in the decision to stage a pogrom.

As to the crowd, which is what made the pogrom a pogrom, its interest was in carnival. It relished role reversal, upturning the social hierarchy—Jewish professionals on their hands and knees cleaning streets. Those who were perceived as having been in charge during the Soviet occupation were now humiliated and forced to admit their guilt in ritualistic spectacles. 

The stinking corpses of murdered political prisoners seemed to justify an apocalyptical revenge against the perceived perpetrators, namely the Jewish population. A particular conjuncture of high politics allowed the urban crowd to act out an uninhibited script of robbery, sexual assault, beating, and murder, demanding these actions and delighting in them.

Please read rest of the article at: https://www.academia.edu/1314919/The_Lviv_Pogrom_of_1941_The_Germans_Ukrainian_Nationalists_and_the_Carnival_Crowd